There were those who believed this calamity marked the end
Those who wondered why God should have so scourged the world
Lain relatively dormant in the Gobi Desert,
It soon spread in every direction
Arriving by sea in October 1347,
Twelve Genoese trading ships docked after a long journey
Through the BLACK Sea
Horrifying surprise: most sailors aboard were DEAD
Those still alive gravely ill
Overcome with fever, delirious, and searing with pain
Oozing BLACK boils
Assassinating almost one-third of the European population
And snaking through trade routes
Swelling neck, armpits, groin
Sizes of an egg to an apple
Life expectancy=
A week, at most
The flea regurgitates BLOOD onto the rat
Just like the new human VICTIM onto its kin
Inhaling exhaled air KILLS in up to two days
Attacks the blood system, DEAD in a day
Like FIRE catching anything dry or oily near it:
Terrifyingly efficient
EXCRUCIATING ignorance
No rational explanation for occurrence or TRANSMISSION
CRUDE, unsophisticated techniques
BLOODLETTING, boil-lancing
Dangerous, UNSANITARY
Superstitious
People going to bed perfectly healthy by night could be DEAD by morning.
A bishop who offered the host at the end of a pole or on a long-handled spoon during mass
Like to a RABID animal in a CAGE.
Pope sitting between two FIRES to breathe unTAINTED air
One of few truly effective measures taken
Bewildered, panicked, DEVESTATED
Doctors REFUSED patients
Priests REFUSED to administer last rites
Shopkeepers CLOSED stores
DESPERATE to SAVE themselves, running for the countryside
Abandoning unhealthy, DYING loved ones,
And getting SICK anyways from affected farm animals
Believing it was divine punishment for SINS against God
GREED, blasphemy, heresy, fornication, worldliness
To OVERCOME it was to win God’s forgiveness
PURGING their communities of heretics, troublemakers
Thousands of Jews MASSACRED,
Accused of POISONING water and practicing witchcraft
Flagellants publicly BEATING themselves and one another
HEAVY leather straps
Studded with SHARP metal
Three times a day
For thirty-three and a half days
Moving to the next town
Beginning the process over again
Unknowingly spreading it further.
City officials boarded up houses,
ISOLATING the SICK
ABANDONING the HOPE of curing the healthy inside with them
ISOLATING incoming ships on a SEPARATE island,
“We hope we don’t make the same MISTAKE as before.”
In two years, one of every three Europeans were DEAD
NOTHING like this before or since
Around 550 people a day
DEAD
There was neither time nor room to bury BODIES
Forced to DIG huge TRENCHES and BURYING people by the hundreds
A pope had to dedicate the river to SINKING CORPSES
Nature has its MORBID sense of humor.
Universities, schools
Closed, ABANDONED
Construction left unfinished
Mills BROKEN
No man ALIVE had the skill to fix them
Everything DECAYED in DISREPAIR
Labor shortage, wages rose
Oversupply of goods, prices dropped
Life was great…
If you were healthy and your whole family wasn’t DEAD.
Villani wrote:
“And many lands and cities were made desolate.
And the plague lasted until _______.”
He DIED before it CEASED, when he planned to fill the blank
Thus, Villani NEVER finished.
Reappearing every few generations for centuries
Sanitation has not ELIMINATEd it
A CHALK DEBT has never gone away
It still exists,
EVERYWHERE.
